Notes on “Way Out of Here”

When I first sat down to write “Way Out of Here,” I was beginning to feel marginally prolific. Trust me on this. For an eager writer, pumping out one longish short story per month after a series of miserable false starts at writing fiction (not to mention a notebook or five of mushy heartbroken poetry) over the previous two decades made me feel like the next Clive Cussler.

The idea for this story was not my own. I was on a roll, having had two moderately successful short stories in on the market and royalties starting to come in. I was ready to keep going, but after several ideas petered out I discovered I couldn’t imagine my way out of a dry sock. So I asked my brother, author Evans Light, for a story prompt. He is great with those and gave me not one, but two ideas.

One had all kinds of fun possibilities, but the other instantly grabbed me: “Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a guy who was able to crawl into his own belly button?” That’s not verbatim, but you get the gist. It was exactly what I needed, a delightful idea.

I could have done many things with it, but went with my gut and created the character of Nolan. It certainly wasn’t my first attempt at writing outside my comfort zone of the horror genre, but it was my first successful one and collected many stellar reviews upon release.

I’ve always been drawn to the absurd, the grotesque, and the frightening, the act of making others uncomfortable in their own skin. Hell, plenty of times this was done to me. Discomfort, dread, self-consciousness—traits inherent within most of us. Body horror being an interesting subgenre that offers endless possibilities, I gloried in it writing “Way Out of Here”.

The story was originally titled “Belly Button Window,” with a psychedelic cover for the chapbook release that was whimsical and dangerous at the same time. But the title and artwork didn’t quite fit the piece it would encapsulate, so ultimately I went with my second choice: the current title accompanied by the illustration of a pair of fists gripping the bars of a darkened cell.

Readers have asked if I’d consider writing a sequel. I have about eight thousand words down on paper somewhere for that very purpose, but I don’t know if I’ll ever finish it.

Sometimes, it’s best to allow things to end where they end.